Success Story: BTM Facility Services

BTM Facility Management

Lakewood, CO

In just three short years, BTM Facility Services has grown from seven employees serving its local market to a multi-branch operation with a team of more than 100 employees covering nine states from Florida to Oregon.

Along the way, Craig Hamilton and his team took what had been a narrow product mix—primarily vending machines and office coffee service operations—and expanded it dramatically with the addition of office supplies and furniture, janitorial products, safety products, and more. Next up: a comprehensive rebrand for the company to support its ambitious expansion plans under the SmartOffice name.

There are several key reasons for BTM’s spectacular growth. They include:

A carefully developed business plan that positions the company as a genuine one-stop resource for its target market (companies with 50–100 employees)

A network of distribution partners spread out over the entire country and across the dealership’s broad product mix

A fierce commitment to relationship building and out-servicing the competition, whether the competition is a brick and mortar big box, another local independent, or an online giant like Amazon

While these factors have all played key roles in crafting BTM’s success story, none of it would have been possible without Red Falcon™ ERP software and ecommerce platform, says Hamilton, who has served as Vice President of BTM Facility Services for the past 10 years.

“Red Falcon is a very impressive program,” says Hamilton. “It’s very well designed and meets our needs and our customers’ needs very well. It can tell us pretty much anything we want to know about the business and where we stand at any given time, and that’s critical to our kind of growth.”

Hamilton also gives the ecommerce program kudos for its flexibility. “Our site was custom-built by Red Falcon,” he explains. “They took the basic template and fleshed it out with additional features and functionality to set us apart from the competition.”

Hamilton and his team switched to Red Falcon at about the same time that their expansion effort was getting underway. The Red Falcon organization has been an essential business alliance ever since. “The technical support Red Falcon provides is amazing,” he says. “There are plenty of online training videos available, and any time we have an issue, Red Falcon technical support jumps right on it.”

“Our customers really like ordering through Red Falcon because it’s easy to use and offers them a superior online shopping experience. With Red Falcon, we certainly have the online resources we need to compete against the likes of Amazon and Staples.”

ECi’s solutions enable the company to out-service the competition and promote themselves online to their local community

Interestingly, Hamilton makes clear he’s not really interested in going head-to-head against the national mega-players. “The likes of Amazon, Staples, and Office Depot are basically in a race to the bottom and we don’t want any part of it,” he contends. “Instead, we back up what we offer online with a steadily growing one-stop-shop capability, a local presence, and the ability to provide the kind of personal service and attention that our customers know they can count on.”

That translates into the kind of value proposition that no big box or online behemoth can match, he claims confidently. If the numbers over the past three years offer any indication, he and his team have plenty of solid reasons for that confidence.

And, Hamilton proclaims proudly, “Things at BTM are only going to get better.” On the technology front, the dealership recently added ECi’s JumpTrack proof of delivery solution, the Acsellerate sales intelligence program and the OfficeShopper mobile app to make what was already a strong technology backbone for the business even stronger.

“ECi and Red Falcon are giving us the tools we need to keep growing,” says Hamilton. “Our goal is to have 150 locations in place across the U.S. by the end of the year and there’s no doubt in my mind that Red Falcon will give us what we need to manage that growth. If anything, Red Falcon will become even more important to the business as we go forward.”